Surf ad-free

As one of the relatively select group of guys who has decided to pursue ballet, I couldn't help but wonder, what the gender ratio actually is. Obviously there's far more women in ballet, but just how outnumbered are guys? 10:1? 100:1? 1000:1? If I had to make a guess, it'd be between 100:1 and 150:1. Thoughts?

re: Female-Male Ratio in BalletBy MrRedComments: 142, member since Mon May 31, 2010

On Sat Aug 07, 2010 07:32 AM

At what levels? Amongst full-time professionals, I would guess 20 or 25:1 a fair look. Across all levels of casual, including children, and lost adults like me, I would posit that 100:1 probably a reasonable rule of thumb, though it could as easily be 200:1.

It depends on the country where you live. In Russia, Cuba, China or other countries where ballet has traditionally been state supported, I am guessing that the schools accept/draft boys and girls about 50-50. Actually, since the US has needed to hire so many male ballet dancers from other countries it could be that those countries have needed to train MORE males than females to make up for those they "export". In the US, of course, the ratio may be even worse than 1:200. Think about a typical, suburban high school with 1,500 girls and 1,500 boys. How many of the girls are taking ballet or have had at least a few lessons in their life? Quite a few. How many of the boys will have had ANY kind of dance (except perhaps for hip-hop)? You will be lucky to find even one!

Even adult hiphop classes I have attended do not have that many men. I used to take one and each time a male would come in for the class, and the teacher was male, he would not even last the whole class. Most would have enough problems doing the warm-ups and forget about the combinations. They couldn't pick up anything. I actually think that where you get the most men is in modern dance. I've had some modern classes that had a good amount of men in them, and 3 out of 5 of the modern teachers I had at university were men.

Usually in ballet classes at my regular studio there are no men or maybe one or two, unless there is a partnering class happening afterwards, then there are more.

In NYC I've gone to ballet classes and there have probably at least 5-6 men (out of about 30 students) in beginning ballet classes. If the teacher is male there have been almost half the class men and also in more advanced classes I see more men. In NYC there are tons of dancers, including professionals and aspiring professionals, so if anywhere in the US you are going to find a lot of male dancers in ballet (and other dance styles) it's going to be NYC.

It depends on the country where you live. In Russia, Cuba, China or other countries where ballet has traditionally been state supported, I am guessing that the schools accept/draft boys and girls about 50-50. Actually, since the US has needed to hire so many male ballet dancers from other countries it could be that those countries have needed to train MORE males than females to make up for those they "export".

Yeah, I was talking primarily about in the 'west', since all those stereotypes seem to carry more weight in western Europe, Canada and the United States.
That's a pretty interesting idea about the other countries needing to have a higher ratio of men to women to account for 'exports' though
@ MrRed, I was talking about an overall average. Although I would assume that in a professional setting, it is a closer ratio, and could vary a bit by company.

At the school where I take class, there are maybe 10 of us out of more than 300 students, and we're scattered age and ability-wise. And I'm at a school where men or boys dancing isn't looked at as a strange thing. So I can imagine it could very well be more than 500-to-1 in the U.S.

I would personally guess it is even less when it comes to adult students. Of the three studios I've taken class in my area, I am the only guy in class in two studios. On the third, a second guy has begun taking classes in my class. All I can do is guess, but I would agree it is at least a 25 to 1 ratio.

About Us

Founded in 1996, Dance.Net is the leading online dance community. We have over 200,000 members from the US, UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and all over the world. We get over 200,000 unique visitors every month to our web and mobile sites. Learn more.